


Pt 2 - A Brother's Secret

by Elaur



Series: The Past Is A Living Thing [2]
Category: Boondock Saints (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-23
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 12:51:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elaur/pseuds/Elaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys go through Ma's things after the funeral.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pt 2 - A Brother's Secret

Connor almost had the door closed on the last of the aunties when she turned around midstep and blocked the door.

"Ya know ya won't find anything, " she said, a sad smile creasing her wrinkled features.

"What do you mean? Find what?" he asked, even though he knew.

"Anything about your Da." She pursed her lips and patted his cheek. "She burned everything."

He nodded. "We just need some time to ourselves, Aunt."

She sighed. "I know, lad. I know. Well, goodnight." She offered her cheek for a kiss, and Connor gladly obliged. Anything to hurry her the hell out.

The snick of the lock was one of the more satisfying things he'd heard in the last week. He turned and gazed at the tiny, but happily empty living room, which had up till now been the focus of a near constant family gathering. Connor stretched upward towards the ceiling and groaned with pleasure as he felt his bones pop with the release of tension. The cliché seemed to be true that the Irish loved nothing better than a funeral. He snickered.

 _"Hey Connor," Rocco yelled above the din in McGinty's. "What's the difference between an Irish funeral and a wedding?"_

 _"Christ. What's the difference, then?" he asked._

 _"One less drunk!" Rocco dissolved into guffaws at his own joke, as half a dozen drunken Irishmen pummeled him._

"Fucken 'ell," Murphy's voice floated in from the kitchen, breaking his reverie. "Are all the vultures finally gone?"

"Aye." Connor threw himself onto the old sofa and groaned again. Rubbing his face hard did little to dispel the bone-deep exhaustion he felt.

"Have ya noticed how small the house is?" Murphy's voice suddenly seemed to come from right next to him, startling him into a gasp. His eyes flew open to see his brother reclining on Ma's old wing chair, boots on the scarred coffee table, beer bottle in one hand.

"Small?" he asked.

"Aye. I remember the place being much bigger."

"Well, it was that you were smaller then, idiot."

"Don't be an arse. We were the same size we are now when we left. Everything just seems smaller."

Connor rubbed his forehead. He was too tired to have this sort of conversation. He wanted a nice hot bath, a nice hot fuck and a good night's sleep, in that order.

Murphy decided to answer his own question. "I suppose we've just gotten used to Boston and everything here in Ireland just is smaller."

"We can never go back home again," Connor whispered, more to himself than as a contribution.

It wasn't until Mrs. O'Reilly's dogs barking at the milkman woke him up the next morning that he realized his plans for the evening had been shot to shit.

***

He met his brother halfway up the stairs.

"You wanker!" he complained. "Why didn't you fucken wake me up to get into bed?"

"Fuck you!" Murphy told him, poking him hard in the chest. "You got the better part of the bargain. I fell asleep in the fucken chair with a cig in my hand!"

They stared at each other for a bit and burst into laughter. Connor remembered well how they feared for their lives because Ma would always pass out in that damn chair with a burning cigarette in her hand. The laughter turned into tears, which Connor wiped away angrily.

"Jaysus, Murph. I gotta piss."

***

Breakfast was leftovers and a gallon of tea, and then they could no longer put it off.

"Well then," Murphy said, sitting back in the chair. "Where do ya want to start?"

Connor shook his head. "Auntie Belle said she burned everything."

Murphy shrugged. "Maybe. But Ma was devious. She would never have told her sisters everything."

***

They started first with the obvious: Her bedroom. The boys had decided, and made sure the family understood, that they would go through Ma's stuff first. Then the family could have the rest.

They knew already what they wanted to keep. Connor picked up Ma's bible off her nightstand and rubbed the worn black leather with his thumb. How many times had Ma smacked the back of his head with it? That was the worst punishment of all, reserved for his more horrible transgressions. He'd rather have a beating than be made to kneel facing the corner and feel the weight of his sin against his skull, while being read a passage from the Book of Job.

Murphy, on the other hand, would rather remember the happier times. He chose to take Ma's pearl earrings, the most valuable things she owned, worn only on special occasions. They'd found out from one of their aunties a long time ago that Da had given them to her as a wedding present.

"I'm amazed she never sold them," Murphy mused as he cradled them in his palm and touched them gently with a fingertip. "They would have gotten us through some tight times."

Connor had his opinions, but he kept them to himself.

***

They found nothing, of course. They'd even pulled all the drawers out of her bureau and checked to make sure nothing was taped to the undersides or the back of it. Murphy made Connor almost weep with laughter, looking for a false bottom in every piece of furniture or loose floorboard in the entire house.

What they did find was half-drunk pints of whisky and packets of cigs stashed in odd places. Who she had been hiding them from was a mystery.

"I don't think she was hiding them, Connor," Murphy said sadly, when he'd voiced his thought. "I think she just got to the point where she didn't want to have to walk far for a nip."

***

At the end of the day, the rubbish bin in the yard was full, and both brothers were exhausted, more from the emotional drain than anything physical. They lay in Murphy's old bed, tangled in each other's arms. Connor stroked Murphy's silken hair as his brother wept into his chest. His own eyes leaked, but weeping seemed beyond him now.

There were no words. There was nothing more to say.

***

Connor startled awake, heart pounding, from a dream of a man standing in the shadows of the back garden calling his name. He looked at Murphy, who was oblivious and snoring peacefully. Connor carefully extricated himself and got up for a cigarette. The dream still had a hold of his mind and he needed to calm down. Why such a vague dream should be so upsetting, he could not figure.

He pulled his pack of cigs from his duffel and saw Ma's bible. For curiosity's sake, and the fact that it was bright enough to read by the moonlight from the window, he pulled it out. He sat on the corner of his old bed closest to the window and looked nervously down into the empty, weed-choked garden. Ma hadn't had gardening ambitions for years, and after the brothers left, there was no one to keep the yard decent. But at least he could see that there was no one lurking about in the back.

He shook his head in amusement and lit his cig. Was it a sin to hold the Holy Book and smoke at the same time? Connor grinned. He'd ask Father Cleary tomorrow after Mass.

He opened the cover and looked at Ma's spidery handwriting, dates and names jotted down when she had been optimistic about the future: Da's name and birth date above hers. Their wedding date. The date of Connor and Murphy's birth. He smirked. No times, just the date.

He flipped through the first few sections and the pages opened on a few memorial cards of deceased relatives.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,  
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;  
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me...

In loving memory of Sarah Anne Cowan, beloved wife and mother...

Connor would never have thought Ma sentimental enough to save these things. Maybe she just used them as bookmarks. He shrugged, another mystery he would never solve.

He thought to read some passages from the Book of Job, just for a laugh, when the bloody thing opened up by itself, revealing a small photo. Connor plucked it out but couldn't see it clearly, the photo itself old, dog-eared and faded. More dead relatives, Connor surmised. He turned it over idly, expecting the names would be written on the back, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

Only four digits were written there, not with Ma's delicate script, but bold, with a felt tip pen --1971. Connor knew without a doubt the writing was Da's.

He clutched the photo, set the bible down and padded out of the room to the bathroom where the light would be better.

He stared at the photo for a long time, his mind whirling and his gut churning. Connor knew what this photo meant; what it could mean, for him, for Murphy, for their Ma. Before he could decide to do otherwise, he put the burning tip of his cigarette to a corner.

He watched in morbid fascination as the edges of the photo blackened and curled, the acrid smoke making his eyes water. He held it until the last possible moment, then threw it in the sink to let it burn all the way. He rinsed the ashes down the drain and held on to the sides of the sink, convulsed by choking sobs.

He barely noticed Murphy open the door and lead him gently to bed, where it was Murphy's turn to hold him while he wept.

Such as it was, having the day they'd had, Murphy didn't bother asking, and Connor never offered an explanation.

***

The photo was faded to almost sepia tones, taken by a cheap camera. It showed two grinning young men, arms around each other's shoulders, with a beautiful and obviously pregnant young woman sitting on a chair between them, grinning just as happily. Nothing extraordinary. Just a photo of a man, his pregnant wife, and his best friend. Except that one man had Murphy's face, and the other had Connor's.

~FIN~

 

Superfecundation -- su`per`fec`un`da´tion - Noun: The fertilization of two or more ova released during the same menstrual cycle by sperm from separate acts of coitus (especially by different males)


End file.
